Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America

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Paul Martin paints a fascinating picture of North America 13,000 years ago in this excellent work of non-fiction. Martin is a strong proponent of the idea that prehistoric humans are the cause of the extinction of many of the large mammals that once roamed North America, and he presents compelling evidence for his theory here. The extinction of the mammoths, ground sloths, and other large mammals has often been chalked up to climate change in the past, but Martin believes this is inaccurate. He points out that most of these mammals had already weathered similar climate changes as those that occurred around the time of their extinction. Additionally, the fossil record does not reflect the dying off of plants and small animals that one would expect from such climate change. Most damning is that the extinctions of large mammals worldwide seem to coincide closely with humans expanding beyond Africa: the fossil record indicates that when humans enter an area, extinction soon follows. This is not a finger-shaking book, however: Martin is not interested in blaming anyone for any kind of political reasons, and while he definitely thinks we should pay attention to the evidence and keep history from repeating itself, he is careful to stress that he is not trying to lay blame for the extinction of the mammoths at the feet of any one group of people. Part of the book that really fired my imagination was when Martin pointed out that much of the native vegetation of the Americas evolved in the presence of mammals that are no longer native. For example, until 10,000 years ago, horses and horse-ancestors were a huge part of the mammal population. For this reason, Martin does not necessarily see it as a problem to have non-native equines like burros and wild horses roaming our grasslands and canyons: his feeling is that the plants evolved to handle this, and handle it they can. They may even thrive under the influence of reintroduced equines. Basically, he thinks that our view of what kind of wildlife is "native" to the Americas is terribly limited, since we only have about 500 years of recorded history. It's an interesting idea, and I would be really curious to know what our landscape might be like if we still had elephant-relatives roaming around.